An article, “Radical Change,” in the September 2019 Scientific American by Michael A. Hogg is a good read to hold up to my commentary on Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark. Hogg introduces a term, self-uncertainty, to point toward a cause for violent extremism in politics, most especially the white nationalist kind. He is a professor of social psychology at Claremont Graduate University, and unsurprisingly therefore refers to data to support his conclusions and viewpoints. The thrust of the argument is that self-uncertainty…..

Read more

For those of you intrigued by the philosophy of medicine, Tom Davis, philosopher at Whitman College, and I have a book just out from Cambridge Scholars Publishing: “Story by Story: Who I Am, What I Suffer.” Beginning with the “anchor” for our book, the psychiatric condition called catatonia, we examine five stories (four are fictions that I’ve written) of persons suffering from illness. Our process, which amounts to a conversation between us, culminates in the suggestion that a deceptively simple…..

Read more

I’ve been reading Robert Hayden recently. His Those Winter Sundays is especially moving.

Read more

To create fiction is to deal, first and foremost, with identity—of the characters within it more obviously, of herself, the author, less obviously (though more crucially, because therein lies the motive for creating). Authoring shares its dual concerns—self-discoveries and self-creations—with readers, being generous by nature, that they may make use of them in their own ways. Self-ness must be its own therefore and because, a product then of evolution and in Homo sapiens then most apparent (at least to us within Homo sapiens). In human…..

Read more

“On the 4thof July I just finished ‘The Laughing Heart—Revised’ for the first time but not the last. My mind is so full of thoughts—about the book, the characters, the ideas, the language, the dilemmas, their resolution (or not). I’ll take the rest of my life, as short or as long as that time might be, to let you know how much I loved your epic… “Thanks again ever so much for your book.”     4 July 2019

Read more

(About The Laughing Heart—Revised) Just finished it last night! Loved it – the mood, playfulness, questioning-ness of it.  Pat (Stanley) Matthews, 6/21/2019

Read more

The “confessional” poem is not my style, as you readers of tIR (the Inconclusive Rule) will agree without further elaboration. But I’ve gotten to know recently Donna Potts, who is the new chairperson for the English Department at Washington State University, and along the way I’ve read her book of short poems entitled Waking Dreams  (2012), which is very “confessional.” And a wonder! I’ve written a review of it on Amazon. I encourage others of you to read it and do the…..

Read more

“I purchased the book last month….wonderfully written.” Michael Murr, 07/01/19

Read more

(A brief comment will help here. This book, the Inconclusive Rule, has four sections—in order they are: “Ordinarily, I …”; “Or I …”; “Julia & Jules”; and “Song.”)   “I like the book very much, especially parts 2 and 3.  For me, “Or I..” is about putting order in experience, or perhaps understanding the connections between all of the varied experiences one has in life. This is one of my personal obsessions, so I may be reading myself into them. …..

Read more

From my brother, Richard, ON MY BIRTHDAY (May 31, 2019) “Just reading The Laughing Heart and liking it very much.  I find the metrics just pull me along from line to line and page to page and from idea to idea.  Not what I expected; I find it enthralling. ”  

Read more